Self and Text in John Donne's Poetry: A Cognitive Poetic Approach

This study seeks to offer a cognitive analysis of the relationship between the concepts of self and text in John Donne's writings. As a great metaphysical poet of late Renaissance, Donne expresses his arguments mostly via elaborate metaphors. One of the most important components of a literary text, metaphor has often been defined as just an ornament to language. However, cognitive poetics, as a recently developed literary field, puts metaphor at the heart of not only language but also human thought. Lakoff and Johnson, as pioneers in this field, claim that metaphor is not a matter of mere language, but our conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical. The aim of this paper is, thus, to probe the internal cognitive structures of the metaphors Donne uses for himself, his beloved, and his writings so as to shed light on his understanding of the two concepts of self and text. An attempt is also made to demonstrate the relationship between these metaphors and the ideologies of the time through a cognitive approach.

Keywords:

John Donne , metaphor , cognitive poetics , self , text